Saturday, 13 May 2017

Tough on pubs, tough on the causes of pubs

Amongst the proposals leaked this week in Labour’s election manifesto was one to carry out an enquiry into the reasons behind the “large-scale demise” of pubs. This comes across as quite jawdropping, given that the Labour government elected in 2005 both imposed the blanket smoking ban and introduced the alcohol duty escalator. Both of these, especially the former, have been major causes of the decline in pub numbers.

They also twice proposed cutting the drink-drive limit in England and Wales, which would have led to the closure of thousands more pubs, and might well have gone through with it if they had been re-elected in 2010. Whether this proposal stems from a genuine lack of self-awareness, or breathtaking chutzpah, is hard to tell. It’s rather like Dr Beeching calling for an enquiry into the reduction in railway mileage.

There seems to be a reasonable chance that the Labour government that banned smoking in pubs is the last Labour government Britain will ever have. Tony Blair resigned just days before the legislation came into force in 2007. If so, the final 'up yours' to the working class that the smoking ban represented would be a fitting bookend for a party that was once on the side of ordinary people.

It brings to mind the occasion back in 2009 when Alan Campbell, the Labour minister responsible for regulating the licensed trade, couldn’t recall the last time he’d actually been in one. No doubt if Jeremy Corbyn dared to venture into a pub somewhere outside of North London the customers would impart some home truths to him.

49 comments:

I have to disagree about smoking being a big factor in pub closures. It was the best thing ever, bringing in a ban on smoking. It's a filthy disgusting habit. No pub ever closed solely because of the smoking ban & to try & use that as an excuse is pathetic.

Anyway, Labour aren't all killjoys and wowsers. My MP until recently was Tony Lloyd - he resigned his seat to stand for Police & Crime Commissioner, but has just lost his job to Andy Burnham. I've met him several times, mostly in Chorlton pubs - in fact, I think the only time we weren't on licensed premises was when he came to our door canvassing.

there were undoubtedly pubs surviving just on trade from smokers, that went out of business following the smoking ban...but Id still always say its not the single cause, there are more reasons for it than that.

but manifestos are wish lists by politicians to try and hoover up as many votes as they think they can sway their way, its not that theyve suddenly discovered a policy on pubs, or realised they did something wrong, its that theyve noticed CAMRA busily trying to encourage members to get candidates signing up to their pubs campaigns manifesto, theyll have noticed its been debated in the Commons alot, theyll have noticed it fits nicely to rhetoric about big business for the few not the many mantra.

so it fits with their overall campaign themes, its something the other parties dont have much to say on, it doesnt have to cost in so no embarrasing holes in budgets, and it might swing a few votes their ways, thats really all its about.

Alan Campbell's comment from way back in history was probably tongue in cheek. I've known him since he was a teacher and often used to have a beer with him in several of my locals especially after he was elected. He still gets in from time to time. As far as pub-going MP's go he must be one of the better variety. Not much cop as an MP though.

Many western countries operate smoking bans in public places, and I strongly suspect that if Labour hadn’t introduced the ban, here in the UK, then the Conservatives would have done so. Surely it’s time to bury this old chestnut once and for all. Pubs are far more pleasant places now that customers don’t have to breathe other people’s stale tobacco smoke. Even my wife, who is a lifelong smoker, thinks the same. This is nothing to do with health issues; just a desire to be able to breathe clean and unpolluted air.

I accept this is your blog Mudge, but why try and hide your right-wing political views behind a post which purports to be about pubs, when it is nothing more than a piece of blatant, click-bait electioneering. The Tory party have now morphed into UKIP, and seem determined to carry on pursuing a policy which will damage the country’s economic prospects for generations to come.

The truth is very few politicians actually care tuppence about pubs, and most would say anything if they thought there were a few votes in it. Neither of the two main parties will be getting my vote in this unnecessary election, which has been called to puff up a Prime Minister who is already far too full of her own self-importance, and can only talk in slogans (strong & stable), rather than anything of actual substance.

If the smoking ban endures a thousand years, it will be no less wrong, and I have absolutely no intention of "burying this old chestnut". Indeed, given that the tenth anniversary is approaching, expect to see plenty more harping on about it. And it's a matter of historical record that it has caused grievous damage to the pub trade. As it says in the sidebar, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Pubs certainly aren't more pleasant places if they're closed, or have few customers left. And antismokers conveniently forget that there were plenty of pubs with non-smoking provision before July 2007. If you really were *that* bothered about it, it wasn't too difficult to find one.

No smoking pubs existed in 2003.http://www.thestar.co.uk/whats-on/out-and-about/phoenix-pub-condemns-cigarettes-to-the-ashes-1-317927and many more had opened by 2007. Had there been no Government interference, we would have ended up with a mixture of smoking and no smoking pubs - the relative proportions reflecting customer preference. Many of the smoking pubs would be far better ventilated to attract the more pragmatic non-smokers. That stable equilibrium, with which the vast majority would be content, was ASH's worst nightmare. That's why it had to get a total ban.Jonathan Bagley

One unpleasant effect of the ban is to make the outside areas of pubs and the pavements in front of pubs much less pleasant places. Sitting in the beer garden of a summer evening, sipping beer and watching the sun go down, is now a pleasure denied to smoke-averse people. Wading knee deep through fag ends on the pavement on a Sunday morning is not a pleasant experience. Nor is having to squeeze through a crowd of burly smokers to hget to the front door of the pub.

In my ideal world smoking would be confined to indoor locations where one can choose to enter or stay out

"Allow the Police to practice their tazer skills on them." - What practice tazer skills on hateful anti-smoking filth you mean? A bit harsh , easier to repeal the smoking ban and so that anti-smokers can get their own pubs and be nowhere near people that don't have share their extremist views.

We all know pubs are dying a slow death due to irrelevance. The bitter, pies and crisps old timers like doesn't do it for the kids. Pubs need a new purpose.

Jezza will nationalize them, stopping evil capitalists. Then he will make them the go to venue for todays tee total vegan marxist. We will be able to enjoy every herbal tea imaginable and dine on the finest falafels.

There'll be no dodgy banter. It'll be a feminist heaven of right on political discussion.

That's more an aspiration than a firm policy aim at the moment. Some of the shadow cabinet baulked at the idea of using the same bogs as Diane "Can't half sh1t, that girl" Abbot and Emily "I'd give that 10 minutes if I were you, pal" Thornberry.

Jeremy has asked them both to add more fibre to their diets so that they may work towards a gender neutral toilet situation but in truth he doesn't hold much hope of an immediate solution, knowing Diane from the time they holiday'd in East Germany together and had to himself face using a lavatory after her.

Paul Bailey: 'Pubs are more pleasant after the ban'? Not for me and many of my smoking and smoking-tolerant friends, they're not. Want 'clean' and not 'stale' air? Then support the options of going to a pub with better ventilation, or a pub with a separate smoking room, or a pub that elects to be nonsmoking in a free market. Or try standing outside, after all smokers don't have a problem doing that, right?! You (and other predictable smoker-bashers) are entitled to your opinions and your tastes. But (and regardless of how many people feel the same way) those opinions and tastes should not be forced on everyone everywhere by law.

If you’d bothered to read my comment properly anonymous, you would have seen that I am married to a life-long smoker, and have been these past 32 years. Labelling me as a “smoker basher”, is therefore both inaccurate and untrue.

I was merely passing comment that pubs are a lot more pleasant without having to fight one’s way though a haze of stale tobacco smoke. My wife feels the same way too.

With hindsight the issue of smoking in public places could and should have been dealt with in a more adult way, and with modern extraction systems, this would have been possible. Good luck in trying to amend the legislation on that one now – hence my comment to Mudge about dropping his obsession with the ban. As people are all too fond of saying to me, over another topical subject, “Get over it!”

17042 pubs closed since the smoking ban was implemented in July 2007,that is nearly 10 years ago,surely not every pub that has closed since then is down to the smoking ban,a well known Nottingham pub closed down a few weeks ago that that was making a profit,but due to high rent rises the people who had run it for 8 years decided to call it a day,nothing to do with the smoking ban,i was a regular visitor to the pub and usually very busy.

Regarding this post i also think it a right wing view on the election coming up,the torys seem to have almost dropped the name from their bus,will it be president May and is she a new thatcher in the coming.As a life long Labour supporter i fear for the normal working classes again as it is going too far to the right again.

Why do people keep banging the smoking drum? Regardless of support or not for the ban, that war is lost. People would be better occupied in a war that can still be won - against the anti-alcohol lobby.

Nail on the head, Mudge. And it's not all over. There is still huge resentment felt by thousands, if not tens of thousands of smokers who have been effectively excommunicated because the gullible politicians believed the lies of the zealots. And as Mudge says, the moves by the temperance lobby are based on the Tobacco Control template, with lies and exaggerations aplenty. If you don't want to suffer the same fate as smokers, you'd better support the idea of smoking pubs / pub rooms.

It came to the point when a visit to a town pub meant the bass beat at a decibel level that hurt the head and a village pub expected you to have a meal if you sat at a table. The days, or rather evenings, of just going out for a pint or pints had gone.

"This comes across as quite jawdropping, given that the Labour government elected in 2005 both imposed the blanket smoking ban and introduced the alcohol duty escalator. Both of these, especially the former, have been major causes of the decline in pub numbers."

I suppose the interesting question might be, not "did the smoking ban close pubs", but would those pubs still be open otherwise. Especially with the decline in real wages that we've had over the last few years.

Jeremy Corbyn's fully costed economic program will make us all richer. It'll work, just as it worked in Venezuela. Socialism always works and when it doesn't it's not proper socialism. Jezza's socialism is proper socialism and will work to make us all equal and all have enough money for alcohol free refreshment and unlimited falafels.

I don't know... but then it's a funny sector isn't it, the pub? Completely discretionary, but not dominated by high income customers. In competition with the supermarkets and their mahoosive buying power. I wonder if the high street bookies might be an apt comparison.

I don't think anyone is seriously saying that the smoking ban is the ONLY cause of pubs closing. For instance I'm well aware that a lot of young people aren't going to pubs any more, because of social media, and more different choices than older people, and having grown up in a nanny state - they're not even drinking for God's sake, they're scared of everything. And there are other reasons, but there's no question that there was a very steep decline after the ban - people like Chris Snowdon for instance have shown it very clearly in a graph - and the ban alienated an important segment of the pub-going population, people who were real 'pub people', who could have kept a lot of pubs going that instead, have closed or are struggling. And it was all so unnecessary.

As for 'get over it', 'get used to it', 'move on', etc . . . if you really believe something is wrong, it's still wrong! People were probably saying 'get over it' ten years into Prohibition, but three years later it was over. Smoking bans will be gone too at some point - though I'm starting to think I won't live to see it.

Spot on there. Of course nobody is saying that the smoking ban has been the sole cause of pub closures, but it's delusional to claim that it hasn't been a significant cause. And, if something is wrong, the passage of time doesn't make it any less wrong.

Just a lot of disparate people who are being shat on from a great height, who have been silenced by the media (have you any idea how often comments in defence of smokers are 'moderated' out of existence in the MSM?), and who are facing an organisation which pours hundreds of millions of dollars a year into propaganda calculated to indoctrinate everyone, including smokers themselves, into a smoker-hating mindset.

But the ban will be rescinded. Not perhaps in my lifetime, as I'm coming up to my allotted three score years and ten, but it will happen. Despite the billions spent on lies and propaganda, resistance is growing, year on year, and with the internet reducing dependence on the MSM, and people's increasing awareness of alternative news sources, Tobacco Control are starting to lose their grip on the information highway. Their desperation to keep the gravy train rolling is beginning to show, as their claims become ever more outlandish.

And people are starting to notice. More and more frequently these days, when yet another standard-issue anti-smoking piece appears in the MSM, the comments are becoming ever more sceptical and critical. Their shrill posturing is turning into a Banshee wail as they desperately demand ever more illiberal measures to persecute the objects of their loathing. But the worm is turning, and their days are numbered. In years to come, people will look back on the social and economic devastation these fanatics managed to wreak on the world, and wonder how it was ever allowed to happen.

Cooking, I am rather inclined to agree with your assessment. Polls show a slim majority in favour of allowing separate smoking areas inside pubs (When asked non binary questions). We (smokers) need those numbers to go up to get this ban amended or repealed but it is an upward struggle because the anti-smoking industry has very deep pockets. However, I don't think it impossible - merely very difficult! Smoking ban(s) fatigue will set in at some point.

Oh, I think you're probably right - I'm sure it will get worse before it gets better.

However, there is growing resistance to further restrictions already. If you recollect, only recently the proposal to introduce outdoor bans in parts of London was met with incredulity and derision. And not just by smokers - by everyone. People are getting increasingly fed up with the incursions of the state into their private lives. It has ceased to be so much about smoking now. It's increasingly about people's right to make their own decisions.

While it was just about smoking, people were happy to go along with it, because most of them weren't smokers, and were unaffected. But now the things that they personally enjoy are in the cross-hairs of 'Public Health' (as we smokers were predicting long ago), it's dawning on people that despite the protestations of Tobacco Control that tobacco was a 'unique product', and that "no, of course this isn't the top of a slippery slope", bans and restrictions are coming to a place very close to them. And they don't like it.

I have to say i find the whole 'nanny state' and 'new puritanism' sentiment that is permeating politics today is not an case of left vs right but rather one of class. It is that condescending attitude of knowing best for others that seems most prevalent in the traditional middle classes that has dictated much of these issues.

Politicians of many a stripe will gladly promote these swingeing policies as they a) portray a supposed moral high ground, b) appeal to the less politically entrenched, 'floating' voter and c) inevitably involve some form of revenue gathering.

So although Labour introduced some disastrous policies for pubs such as the smoking ban, there has been precious little opposition against these by any politicians of any party since.

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Salient quotations

"If I see one more politician who voted for the smoking ban crying crocodile tears about the state of the pub industry, I may throw up." (Chris Snowdon)

"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)

"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government. (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)

"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)

"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)

"There's a saying that, given time, all organisations end up as if they were run by a conspiracy of their foes." (Rhys Jones)

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)